Ambushed by trees with golden leaves, a valley of broken fortifications was surrounded by a sea of mist and mountains. The land was marked by echoes of ancient battlefields. Stone walls jutted out of the ground like giant’s teeth. Torchless sconces decorated these forgotten walls that were now open to the wind.
A small yellow bird landed next to a pond in this field of shattered battlements and forgotten courtyard. Yet, one building among all still stood. At the entrance of an ancient forest was a temple.
The walls of the temple were carved with the images of three-headed warriors wielding spears, halberds, and blades. They fanged images holding arrows in between their teeth as they felled their ancient foes. This very same wall depicted men and women with golden auras and palms made of iron. Deep within the temple, there resonated the echo of blood and conflict born from the Field of Blades.
Two parties were screaming at each other as they fought in the Field of Blades. An Elementalist hurled a rain of ice spears at Duelist that was leaving an after image as the words dodged in capital letters appeared over the Duelist’s head.
A Bard was trying to revive a Seer that was face-first on the ground, but then a Paladin appeared. There was a flash of yellow light and the Bard fell beside the Seer.
“Goddammit guys!” Duelist was swarmed by enemy team and was instantly killed.
Reigning victorious, the winning team reappeared outside the battleground into the Temple’s main entrance. There was an oculus in the center of the roof that beamed down some sunlight. The sound of battle was replaced by the sound of water that flowed down from the lily fountains in the walls.
“You guys suck!” The Bard balled their fist. “We were almost got to gold, but you guys just spent the whole match eating up attacks.”
“I’m a tank! It’s my job to take aggro in PVE and PVP. He’s the one that needs to be doing damage,” The Duelist pointed at the Ranger.
“I couldn’t stay alive for more than a second because the Seer didn’t provide any buffs. You’re supposed to buff us. That’s what….”
Next to one of the limestone pillars, was the entirety of the Daybreak Guild.
“The Monks of Morning Mist say, ‘Temper the mind and body into iron.’ Meanwhile we’re just a bunch of toxic players just mashing against each other,” Akira said.
“This isn’t a fighting game. PVP usually end up like this in MMOs.”
“They’ll be fine,” Melody said. “So, you guys want to queue up?”
“Maybe we should check the rewards beforehand. It’ll be better if we know what we can get,” Gray suggested. The screenshots related to the new PVP update didn’t show any items that he would have wanted, but it was best to see. They were in the land of Sax’zo. A small mountainous country that upheld a culture of monks who partook in the refinement of battle and steel. They were the central hub for PVP. There were other mysterious structures that came with the update.
The tallest mountain in the valley among held a round coliseum. Made of brown stone, the coliseum was raised like an ancient crown. However inquisitive players would brave the mountain path to find that the front entrance was sealed. Most assumed it was for a future update.
The Daybreak Guild was now composed of three level 35s. Meaning that the endgame was in sight. In 15 more levels, they would reach the level cap, but till then they were content to find their way through the dungeons and now the freshest PvP content.
They walked over to a bald monk that never opened his eyes named Je. He had his hands tucked politely behind him. Je showed his wears on a red linen cloth.
As part of the PVP content update, a new currency was added. Jigtens, or tens as the community just called them, were awarded when a player participated in the field of blades PVP. Winning would net a player slightly more tens than losing.
This currency could be exchanged for items that Je was selling. There were armor sets, weapons, and a fashionable wool hood. None of these weapons had actual stats but were made for the players to have some new fashion to wear and use.
“Dude, the monk weapon looks cool. It’s just a bare fist with a yellow aura,” Melody said. “Super cool.”
“Well, this is the monk's place basically,” Gray said. “Makes sense they would get the coolest looking stuff.”
“The codex of Sax’zo actually says that monk class that players can choose are actually a distinct order from this one. I forgot their names though, but it has to do with what coliseum that’s at the top of the mountain.”
“Cool,” Gray said. Originally, Gray would have feigned interest, but the more expeditions that he and Akira went on to search for Codexes did rub of him a little bit. He was particularly interested in the Sword Saints of Leran, but those codexes were rarer than codexes about Seers.
“Ok, we’ve looked enough,” Melody walked away from Je and turned to the field of blades. “Let’s do some gaming.”
“The matches are 5v5, so we’re going to get randoms when we get into the arena. I hope they keep a cooler head than the people we just saw,” Akira added.
“We’ll see,” Gray said. The seer of the Daybreak wasn’t optimistic as he said these words.
***
The three spawned into the arena. The Field of Blades was an apt name as swords were planted into the clay soil. Strangest among all to Gray was that the swords didn’t seem to rust or showed signs of decay. Many of them kept the luster of their steel blades and silver crossguards. Gray looked across the field and saw
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“Alright! Let’s get a win today.” One of their teammate cheered as they spawned. The Daybreak trio looked to their left and saw a monk smiling at their enemy. It was a woman with short black hair and bandage wrapping around her hands. She started doing stretches before the match started. Not that it would have any benefits on her virtual muscles. “Have you guys played PVP yet?”
“Not really,” Melody responded.
“Keep in mind that the enemy can’t hear us talking. There’s only team chat.”
“Good to know,” Gray responded. He felt that the monk’s name was familiar. The name Kelsy just seemed familiar. He started to recognize more faces around the server. He saw Largesworth a couple times when running The Blue Sanctus dungeon.
“We have a pretty balanced team,” Their second ally appeared. It was an augur. This was one of the healing classes that Gray knew the least about. Rather than a bard that healed with magical music or the dryad which healed with nature magic. The augur used some type of technological gauntlet. Gray assumed that Akira knew the actual lore about the strange device. Fitting enough, the healer was also a Makana with an Iron ponytail and square shaped eyes. Unfittingly, her name was Madame Cheddar.
“Monks have a little bit of healing on top of being a damage dealer, so I think we got a good comp for PVP,” Kelsy smirked. “We’re going to murder them.”
Gray looked forward and saw that the enemy team was fully gathered as well. A countdown of ten seconds began.
Kelsy performed a roundhouse kick and then Gray realized that this was the same monk that kicked him in back in the Qualfo Swamp.
“Hey, didn’t you randomly attack me that one time?” Gray asked.
The match started. The countdown was replaced by a 5-minute timer. The victors of the fight needed to be decided in 5 minutes. The enemy team stepped into the arena. Their names were just replaced by their classes. So, they were fighting Warrior, Elementalist, Archer, Dryad, and Dancer.
Everyone ran forwards to engage with the enemy except for Gray. Melody crossed blades with Warrior. Akira tried to shoot poison arrows at duo of Elementalist and Archer who were holding back at spawn. Dancer was beside them granting them damage buffs. Kelsy pressed her fist together and clobbered Warrior over the head. Madame Cheddar was trying her best to keep Melody alive. Her gauntlet sent rays of healing light and created fractal barriers that protected Melody from additional damage.
Warrior received heals from Dryad who would also slash at Melody with a sword that had a green glow.
Gray placed meadow beneath Melody. He turned to Madame Cheddar and granted her a mana regeneration buff.
“I don’t use mana. I use stamina,” Madame Cheddar responded.
“Oh, sorry. I haven’t played with an augur.”
“Don’t worry about.”
“Watch Out!” Kelsy yelled.
Gray turned to face the arena and saw Elementalist converging embers into an empty space between his hands. The embers collided to form a ball of fire and Elementalist threw it like a grenade. The fireball didn’t go far enough to reach Gray or Madame Cheddar, but he saw Melody, Akira, and Kelsy were caught in the radius.
Gray watched their health drop to a quarter.
“Woah,” Madame Cheddar’s gauntlet blue light turned into a piercing white light. She punched the air and a wave of energy passed through the field. It healed everyone back up to half health. Gray saw the elementalist preparing another spell. After being healed by Madame Cheddar, Kelsy bolted towards Elementalist.
“Akira!” Gray screamed.
“Yeah?” Akira aimed another arrow at the elementalist.
“Don’t target them. Target the dancer. If we distract them, then Kelsy can finish off the elementalist. Here this buff will let you attack faster,” Gray used a recently gained ability called Gale on Akira.
“Got it.”
Akira followed Kesly. The archer was catching up to her until Kelsy got within 30 feet of her target. She jumped in the air and hurtled towards Elementalist with a flaming kick. The very same attack that Gray was introduced to. Elementalist bounced against the invisible wall that was near spawn and landed on the floor. Kelsy didn’t stop. Elementalist tried to scramble to her feet, but Kelsy yanked her by the arm. Kelsy started to punch her into the dirt.
Gray saw that the murder line was indeed true. Akira let Kelsy handle her target and fired at the archer and dancer.
“Melody,” Gray gave a damage buff to Melody. Melody smiled and swapped her attention to Dryad. Gray was going to ask her to target the dryad, but she did it by herself. With Madame Cheddar and Gray helping. They were able to take down the Dryad.
In the enemy’s side of the arena, Akira was attacked by both Dancer and Archer. He was hit by arrows and chakrams.
Madame Cheddar tried to help, but the Warrior roared. Just like with mobs, Roar’s effect was the same. Gray, Melody, and Madame Cheddar were forced to target Warrior. Gray noticed that Madame Cheddar stopped moving.
All this chaos allowed Kelsy to stomp on the Elementalist without anyone on the enemy team noticing.
Akira fired one more arrow towards the sky. A rain of arrow fell down like rain on the duo before Akira was reduced to zero health points and spawned outside the bounds of the arena.
“Come on, guys! Finished it off!” Akira pumped up his fist.
“Will do!” Kelsy pressed her right palm against her left fist and healed herself. She smiled and her eyes glowed as she did another flaming kick towards the backline duo. It didn’t take long for both Archer and Dancer to lose their lives as well.
Still no longer moving, Madame Cheddar ended up outside the arena when Warrior plunged his axe into her head. However, he was the only one left on the enemy team.
He tried his best to survive against the remaining members, but he was finished off and the win went to Gray, Melody, and Kelsy.
They appeared outside of the arena and were given a whopping 750 tens to spend at Je’s store.
“Good games guys,” Gray said. He was not surprised when the enemy team took the defeat with grace. He was not surprised that the enemy team were all part of the same guild.
Gray was surprised that their names were actually Warrior, Elementalist, Archer, Dryad, and Dancer.
“How is that even allowed?” Madame Cheddar scratched her metallic head. “They don’t even have last names.”
“I could see it causing problems with the character database if alpha test PCs were made with those names,” Melody crossed her arms. “Don’t MMOs usually ban certain names like that? I mean you can’t name your character Elrin Online, right?”
“Pfft, Who cares what their names were,” Kelsy put her hands behind her head. “We won! Which means I can buy those monk weapons.”
“That’s nice. Sorry that I left for a few seconds there. I had to take my headset off for something,” Madame Cheddar explained.
“No worries,” Gray responded. He expected that they would part ways there, but he saw a particular glint in Melody’s eyes. The same one that she had when she made it their mission to buy a guild house or go fishing. Truly it was the look of someone with ambition. The look of the co-founder of the Daybreak guild. He thought it was certainly a cute look.
“Why don’t you guys join our guild?” Melody asked.
“Really?” Kelsy asked. “Do you guys do PVP?”
“You just saw us do PVP,” Gray said.
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“We do all types of content. Surely, you do more just attack people in the swamps and spend your time in this temple.”
There was a part of Gray that thought maybe Kelsy was a fiend and actually only did PVP.
“True. I’m in.”
“What about you Cheddar?” Melody asked.
“Well, I’m kinda busy a lot of the time. My hours on the game might not be so consistent.”
“We are all adults with full-time jobs and responsibilities,” Akira shrugged. “You’re free to play whenever you’re free or just whenever you want. We don’t demand anything.”
“I see. Then, I would like to join as well.”
“Great! We gotta show the guild house as well,” Melody cheered.
“Ooh, a guild house. Let’s go check it out now,” Kelsy rubbed her hands together. “You know that Je sells housing items. I could score ourselves some nice decoration.
The gold invitations were sent, and the Daybreak guild nearly doubled in a single day. It now consisted of five players.